Chinese court sets date for Wang Lijun verdict

Reuters, BEIJING

A Chinese court will announce its verdict on a former police chief at the center of the country’s biggest political scandal in decades on Monday, an official said.

The hearing for Wang Lijun, (王立軍) former police chief of Chongqing municipality, will come a week after he was tried in Chengdu on multiple charges, chiefly that he sought to cover up the murder of a British businessman by Gu Kailai (谷開來), the wife of fallen politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來).

“The verdict will be announced at 8:30am on Sept. 24 in our court,” an official in the Chengdu court news department told reporters.

Wang’s defense lawyer confirmed the date.

Wang, 52, lifted the lid on the murder of the British businessman Neil Heywood in February when he fled to the US consulate for over 24 hours and, according to sources, told envoys there about the murder that would later bring down Bo.

An official account of Wang’s trial for the first time implicated Bo in a criminal act, indicating that he had “angrily rebuked” Wang for confronting him with the murder allegations against Gu.